I had the opportunity to visit the Zappos headquarters this past week in Las Vegas, Nevada. Zappos is an online retailer that started off selling shoes but has expanded into other clothing articles. Zappos prides themselves on customer service and company culture, which I think go hand in hand. My company, PEER 1, got the first look at them in action at South by Southwest in Austin this past spring. On one of the conference days, it happened to be raining and as you walked into the Austin convention center, Zappos branded panchos were being distributed. That means that a Zappos employee read the weather, anticipated that it could rain so took the risk and ordered a large number of branded Zappos panchos and had them delivered overnight. Wow! This was a company to look at. Further, we got a hold of their culture book.
So next thing you know, we (PEER 1) took a trip to Vegas to visit their headquarters in hopes to learn more about their culture and what makes it so special and attractive. It was a fun and interesting tour.The employees were very welcoming and accomodating. The Zappos culture is focused entirely on the employee. How can we make this a better workplace for our employees? They have a nap room, a on site counselor, decorated cubicles, free food all day, an arcade room and more.
If you make your employees happy, you have a better chance of making your customers happy. What customer wants to talk to a disgruntled customer service representative? What employee will care about revenue if they don’t feel like they are contributing to the bottom line?
It’s all about empowerment.
A few things I was very impressed with were:
1- Every employee (regardless of the title) is required to go through a 4 week training program that requires them to spend a day working in every position in the company. This includes answering the phones and talk to customers and going to their warehouse in Kentucky to stock items. This gets every employee on the same page to see the big picture, helping with their bottom line. This also helps during high demand times such as Christmas, so everyone can get on the phones when needed.
2- If a customer calls in looking for a pair of shoes that they are out of stock on, the customer service representative is required to look at 3 different competitors to find the shoes the customer is looking for and at the best price. They will then give them all the information and send them on their way to buy those shoes from their competitor. Next time that customer wants to buy a pair of shoes, guess who they will go to?
3- The unlimited amount of resources. They have a library filled with brand new motivational business books. They are books about leadership, customer service and everything else that helps a company succeed. You can take them if you want, they are yours to keep. The investment in the employee is clearly shown here.
The only thing I was a bit turned off by was that Tony, the CEO, did not stop by to say hi to us. We went to lunch at a nearby restaurant where Tony was sitting at a table next to us but he did not even pick up his hand to acknowledge that we were there. We were sitting with a couple of Zappos employees so he knew we were there visiting the Zappos office. Coming from a company that prides themselves on crushing corporate culture, I found it to be a bit contradictory. Weird.
Coming from PEER 1, an IT Infrastructure company, it was interesting to see how many parallels we had with Zappos, an online retailer. When your pride yourselves on service and invest in your employees, it doesn’t matter what industry you are in. I also think that Zappos could learn a few things from PEER 1.
The way I look at it is this, without customers I wouldn’t have a job. Without caring about my fellow employees, I wouldn’t enjoy my job. My passion is to take care of the customer and my fellow employees. To succeed, you can’t do one and not the other. I think too often companies get caught up in internal processes and a bunch of red tape and completely miss the boat.
